The Melancholy of Master Hand
by Shadow Goo
Summary: Not everyone is happy about Brawl. Most notably, Master hand. What with all the new bosses, events, and challenges, the poor old glove is starting to feel a bit outdated! Oneshot, kinda bland but with some slight humerousness.


A/N: Mugh. By the end, this story really just kind of unraveled because I didn't have any good idea on how to end it.  
Basically, this is how I imagine Master Hand feels about how much smaller his role in smash brothers has become since the introduction of all the other bosses and such in Brawl. Might not be very funny or entertaining, but oh well.

"Oh, Master Haaaaand!" Peach called sweetly as she rapped gently against the door to his office. A series of grumbles was heard emanating from inside, which the princess took as a cue to step back from the door a bit. A minute later, the door swung haphazardly open, revealing Master Hand levitating in a somewhat slumped manner that suggested he wasn't in the best of moods at the moment, only for him to quickly straighten himself back up upon seeing Peach.

"Ah, yes, Peach, won't you come in, please?" Master Hand welcomed politely with a sweeping gesture that seemed to denote a bow. As a princess, Peach was typically treated with respect, even though Master Hand himself never liked her incessant cheeriness much. Ushering her over to a pair of couches with a small coffee table in between, plopping down on the larger of the two with a loud thud. He had a sneaking suspicion that its legs were going to snap someday, but that would be dealt with another time.

"Now, how can I help you, Peach?" he asked, reclining in the cushy seat (as much as a hand can recline), tiredness starting to seep into his voice. Peach cocked her, staring at him curiously. Master Hand immediately felt very nervous. She noticed, didn't she?

At that moment the silence was penetrated by one of Link's piercing yells, followed by a loud thwacking noise and a grunt of pain. And then again. And again. And again. Peach looked at Master Hand curiously, who groaned and leaned over the back of the sofa. "Crazy, turn the volume down. Peach and I are having a meeting," he called sternly to his brother.

"But I'm WINNNNIIIIIIIING!" the spastic left glove whined petulantly. Looking around Master hand, Peach noticed that Crazy Hand had taken command of a Wii and decided to occupy himself by making Link repeatedly roll into trees, castle walls, and various other hard objects.

"NOW," Master hand urged, and Crazy hand made one final child-like whine before reaching for the volume knob. Sighing, the glove turned in his seat back to face Peach, only faintly noticing that she had somehow set up a tea set on the coffee table in the twenty-second period he was looking away. "Well, anyway, Peach," Master Hand pressed on, silently cursing his inability to tent his fingers and lean on the coffee table intently. "What brings you to my office? Perhaps questions about the new special match system?"

Peach admittedly was curious about what train of thought brought about the creation of mega bunny curry heavy metal slow angled brawl, but it wasn't what she had came here for. "No," she responded simply with a shake of the head.

Master Hand would have raised his eyebrows if he had them. Most of the questions he received were directed towards that, and he had been hoping to get this over with quickly. Clearing his intangible throat, he decided to ask. "About what, then?" he asked, hopefully in a very inconspicuous tone. Peach shifted in her seat and shifted her attention on the parasol she frequently carried with her.

"Well…." She began, sounding a tad uncertain before looking up and fixing her eyes on the mammoth glove. "It's about you, actually."

Master hand noticeably flinched. He hated idling questions about why he did this, how is he a levitating hand, how does he eat, hur de blur ha ha I waste your time. He already had enough troubles of his own dealing with -

"You don't quite seem yourself lately." Peach spoke softly.

Dammit.

"Whatever do you mean, Peach?" Master Hand asked as innocently as he could, quickly recovering from how noticeably he flinched and trying to appear large and menacing. He peered at her carefully-she wasn't buying it. She knew something was up. Damn Peach and her perceptiveness to emotions.

"Well….you've been lacking some of the 'oomph' you had when you were ordering the wireframes and polygons and alloys around," she began slowly. "And you've been acting a lot less violent when people don't follow your expectations…" Master hand flinched again. Was she stalking him or something? "And Captain Falcon says you don't even do your menacing laugh when you float onto Final Destination at the end of classic mode!"

"THAT IS COMPLETELY UNFOUNDED AND-" Master hand quickly shut up upon seeing the steely gaze Peach was fixing him with. "Okay, yes, fine. I admit I haven't quite been feeling myself lately. Happy?" Peach didn't respond. "Good. Well, if that's all…." He quickly got off the couch and began shoving Peach out the door, the surprised princess digging her heels deeply into the thick carpeting in response. This didn't do much but slightly slow the progression, but it still managed to elicit a reaction from the glove.

"Dammit, you're ruining the floors."

"Master hand, if something's troubling you, wouldn't it be healthier to talk about it?" Peach hurriedly said as she attempted to further delay her forceful departure from the glove's office. The hand paused and mumbled a bit, but then continued to shove her towards the door. "Y-you can talk to me about it if you like!" she was panicking, admittedly, but she was feeling the compulsion to help that comes with living the life of a sweet and dainty princess.

Evidently, it worked, as the hand stopped shoving and floated in a way that somehow denoted it was giving her a very odd stare. Peach smiled at it awkwardly.  


"You will speak to _no one _about this." He suddenly hissed just loud enough for her to hear. Peach nearly yelped in surprise, but stifled it and managed a brisk nod instead.

After ushering her into a separate room branching off from the office to get away from the prying ears of Crazy Hand, Master hand went limp and heaved a great sigh. "I feel old, Peach." He began weakly.  
Peach had nothing to say to this. She had absolutely no idea how old the giant hand actually was, or how it could actually feel old, so all she did was a brief nod and a fidgety twirl of the parasol. "I see…what exactly do you mean by that?" she asked gently.

"I mean that I'm OUTDATED. Past my prime, if you know what I mean." He spat bitterly. "I haven't managed to toughen up at all between the last tournament and now."

"But that doesn't mean you've gotten weaker-" Peach began hopefully, only to have a large framed photograph that was hanging on the walls taken off and shoved into her face. It was a photo of Pichu facing off against Master Hand. Well, perhaps "facing off" wasn't quite the right word-Master Hand had just shown up, and the tiny mouse was already huddled in fear.

"Take a look at this" he hissed, pointing to the HP bar representing his health that had somehow been captured in the photo. It clearly read 300 hp. "This is from the Melee era. Now look at this." He carelessly tossed the photograph aside and produced another one from somewhere.

"Why, that's from Kirby's classic mode campaign two weeks ago!" Peach responded happily upon recognizing where it was from. Master Hand remained extremely displeased.

"Precisely. Notice the hp bar now?" he remarked sourly, twitching a little bit. Peach frowned and looked back at the photo.

250 hp.

"Huh, that's funny…." Peach began, stroking her chin thoughtfully. "They're both the same fight, but the current one is showing fifty less health-"

"EXACTLY!" The massive glove roared, shattering the frame between his fingers and scattering glass all over the floor. "I've actually gotten WEAKER! And what's more," he growled menacingly, "ever since the Subspace incident, I've been upstaged by practically every other boss!"

Peach _had_ been wondering why he'd shown so much hostility towards the "bosses" (she thought it was a rather funny name, personally) that he'd launch an all-out campaign amongst the smashers to turn them into trophies for him to decorate his office. Guess he doesn't like his power being usurped, she thought to herself as he accidentally-on-purpose knocked the trophy version of Rayquaza out a window.

"Oh, and don't even get me STARTED on what happened with Subspace," he continued his rage-filled tirade, intent on telling his thoughts about the subspace incident despite just asking Peach to not get him started on it. "Not only did I wind up laying uselessly on my back from having my ass handed to me, but THIS blue faggot," he spat in utter disgust and hatred, pointing a massive, accusatory finger at the trophy of Tabuu striking a pose with his golden chain thing, "completely USURPED my position of power as a final enemy, villain, everything, and adding insult to even MORE insult, he used me like a little puppet! A little, insignificant PUPPET!" his anger promptly got the better of him and he started violently squeezing the trophy as if trying to choke the non-existent life from it. Peach stared blankly.

A few minutes later, Master Hand had planted the trophy on the floor and was trying to twist its head off, jabbering incoherently in accompaniment with Crazy Hand, who had wandered in halfway through Master Hand's assault on his lifeless, inanimate foe and offered to help out by pinning it to the ground. Frivolous wastes of time were his specialty, after all. Peach was at quite a loss as to what to do as she sat tiredly on the couch, watching disinterestedly. She was plenty concerned for the glove, but watching him furiously assaulting an inanimate object got old after a while.

"Are you quite done yet?" the princess asked, stifling a yawn. The glove quickly came back to its senses and stopped attacking the trophy. Crazy Hand, however, continued pinning it to the ground in waiting for his brother to continue attacking. Master Hand cleared his incorporeal throat again.

"Er, yes. Quite. I'm sorry you had to see that." He began. Crazy, upon seeing that his brother was being all official and boring again, quickly wandered off to find something else to do. Peach tilted her head and smiled again, apparently not so tired now that he isn't being intensely aggravated anymore.

"It's okay, sir. Everyone needs to let loose every now and then," Peach reassured him. She then took his massive pinky and awkwardly led him back out into the main office, where they resumed their positions on the sofas as Peach began cleaning up the tea set she left on the table. Soon after, she pulled a thick book out of nowhere and presented it to Master hand, who awkwardly held it between his thumb and forefinger.

"What's this?" he asked blankly as he fidgeted with the too-small book, turning it over and over with his massive fingers. Peach smiled again.

"It's a book on emotional management. Maybe it'll help prevent this sort of thing from now on. Now, didn't you say you have something important to do?" she replied sweetly.

The enormous glove stared blankly before promptly agreeing and sweeping her out of the room, pausing for a brief goodbye and thank you. He then plopped back down on the couch and started awkwardly thumbing through the book.

TWO DAYS LATER

Another classic mode tourney was coming to a close, and the crowd was cheering wildly in anticipation. While classic mode had become a rather low-key affair in comparison to all the exciting new competitions and modes presented by this year's installment of the smash brothers competition, when the challenger was a newcomer or the difficulty set to its highest, the turnout was always a sight. When both requirements were met, though, the audience was phenomenal.

In the locker room Olimar was occupied vigorously warning Sonic of the upcoming challenge as the hedgehog stretched his legs in preperation. Olimar was aware that he too was a newcomer to the tournament and had only completed classic once, but upon hearing that the speedy smash brother had chosen very hard difficulty on his very first run through classic, he couldn't help but feel concerned and try to offer any advice he could.

" You have to watch his movements and be on your toes at all times," the tiny spaceman cautioned, running around in anticipation as Sonic continued his warmup, seemingly paying him no heed. "And when he spins and launches into the air, run as fast as you can. He try to drop down on you with a drilling attack maneuver that'll hit repeatedly and do lots of damage, so you have to dodge it at all costs-"

"So basically, I just have to keep moving?" Sonic asked, a wide, confident grin on his face. Olimar paused, then nodded vigorously. "Then it'll be a cinch. There isn't anybody in this joint who can move like me!" He finished with a confident thumbs-up. Olimar cocked his head. Normally he scorned this kind of endlessly optimistic thinking-he was a man of logic, after all-but Sonic's confident statements tended to be correct more often than not.

A familiar bellow of "FINAL STAGE!" reverberated throughout the entire establishment, cuing Sonic to rush to the locker room exit as Olimar hastily wished him good luck. Before long he made his entrance onto the platform that made up Final Destination, tapping his feet impatiently for his opponent to arrive.

Suddenly, an enormous "MU HU HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA" sounded from nowhere, and Master Hand roared out of the sky, his fingers packed tightly into a fist, before slamming down onto the stage with a deafening crash that knocked the hedgehog off his feet. He then lifted off the platform and whipped himself into a menacing, clawlike posture as the hedgehog stared wide-eyed at his opponent.

As the announcer's booming voice slowly announced the countdown to the final match, in the midst of the stands, Peach giggled delightedly to herself upon seeing the massive glove back to his old self. She may have to apologize to Sonic later, but Master Hand was once again truly master of the games.


End file.
